A Million Questions About Elio, But Here's My Big One.

[JEBar]

Terrence

thanks for your prospective .... this site is most certainly offers a wealth of knowledge .... hopefully, we will soon be able to read reports of real world experience with an Elio .... 200,000 miles would most certainly put it in a class where it is bound to be very successful

Jim

 

[Stiffler]

Thank you so much for all the welcoming messages! I've had to be off the site for a few days (I've some how become extremely busy lately ) but I love all the responses I got here. All this information I got about the motor and the articles posted (especialy the ones about the flame-spray) make me feel pretty good about the motor especially. I've read that the Elio is supposed to be DIY friendly, and the pictures I've seen posted from under the hood seem like it'll be an easy enough job to replace parts when something does go out. Can't wait!

 

[ncarter124]

Not sure if this has been brought up, but the Geo Metro and Ford Festiva were both cheap 3-cylinder (most varients, I am aware there was a 4-cyl Metro) that were really not expected to be long-lasting upon release, however they do seem to last if taken care of. A friend of mine knew a customer at an auto parts store a few years ago that had a Festiva that he bought new with over 600k miles on it. Original engine and transmission, he just took care of it and kept up on all the maintenance.

As far as I know, reliability is somewhat unknown, but as others have stated, I'd say due to the parts suppliers it should get 100k easy.

 

[JEBar]

Not sure if this has been brought up, but the Geo Metro and Ford Festiva were both cheap 3-cylinder ....

as already mentioned in another post, in the 80's we had a Chevy Sprint with a 3 cylinder, 1 liter, Suzuki engine .... that little rig got great mileage, usually 50'ish on interstates .... by the time the engine got to 75,000 miles, it was done .... you had to add oil every time you took on fuel .... I've been very skeptical of 3 cylinder motors every since but all that being said, today's technology is drastically better than it was in the '80's

Jim

 

[pohutukawa]

Anyone on here own a motorcycle that could chime in on this?

This is going to be a hard question. Motorcycle tires are completely different from car tires. When you turn a bike, it leans onto the sidewall. There are simply tremendous forces on the contact patch on the ground, and that patch is ridiculously small. I am very lucky if I can get 8,000 miles from a set of tires, and I put that many miles on my bike in a year. Last time I bought, rear was $230 and front was $210 - including mounting. The Elio is more like a car in this case - the tires are going to be regular car tires, fairly small ones. With the weight, I'd bet on 48k miles easily and replacing them for under $300 for the set of 3.

 

[Dusty921]

This is going to be a hard question. Motorcycle tires are completely different from car tires. When you turn a bike, it leans onto the sidewall. There are simply tremendous forces on the contact patch on the ground, and that patch is ridiculously small. I am very lucky if I can get 8,000 miles from a set of tires, and I put that many miles on my bike in a year. Last time I bought, rear was $230 and front was $210 - including mounting. The Elio is more like a car in this case - the tires are going to be regular car tires, fairly small ones. With the weight, I'd bet on 48k miles easily and replacing them for under $300 for the set of 3.

My racing experience tells me that, given what we know about Elio specs, tire wear should be excellent. If tires matched current premium manufacturers sizes, say Michelin, we could expect even better. My hope is that I will be able to swap mine out to Michelins almost immediately, especially if the suspension geometry will, as it appears, with coilovers etc, allow for some limited tuning.

 

[Nitro]

Anyone on here own a motorcycle that could chime in on this?

I did own a motorcycle and can tell you that is a bad comparison... Motorcycle tires are round not flat and are made of softer rubber to ensure they don't slip

 

[pablotech1]

Anyone on here own a motorcycle that could chime in on this?

The Elio uses car tires, not motorcycle tires. This does not apply.

 

[Mark Ambrose]

The body will never rust, it's lighter than it's off-the-shelf components are used to and the engine is de-tuned. Barring any really stupid engineering issue I expect this car to last a very long time, be inexpensive to maintain with lots of do-it-yourself maintenance if that's your bag.

I've owned bikes for the past 45 years and a couple of airplanes as well. Skygazer is correct in that the vehicle will last forever as long as you want to keep replacing worn out parts. It's not unusual to see 50-60 year old airplanes flying around perfectly sound. Just depends on how long you're willing to keep them maintained. Given the state of the art in automotive engineering today I can't see any reason why it should not last more than 100,000 miles right out of the box.

 

[Dusty921]

Spent an inordinate amount of time researching the Elio before I jumped, one of the biggest reasons I went "All in" to the max is EMs apparent attention to detail. Step back and look at what they go through to make sure that anything shown to the public, advertising, media releases, live appearances etc. comes across as a "Class Act". If the suppliers feet are held to the fire with the same strict tolerance windows, I feel confidant that we can enjoy our Elios for many years with a little common sense maintenance. Just like the old 150 I flew in the Keys. I'm going to try for 250K, had 3 Dodge's that did it and more.

Paul Elio has consistently "damned the torpedoes" and continues full speed ahead in the pursuit of his business model. Boys, I think this is a breath of sanity for the auto industry, providing, one of the Industry's vultures (Big auto or Big oil) doesn't relegate this to a shelf at area 51, alongside that carburetor that's been collecting dust since the 50's.